


So I had, apparently, 7,500 words of shit to say about the Magicians 4x12

by greywash



Series: The Magicians S4 Meta Omnibus [1]
Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: (except for the parts of it that are sort of a fanfic), (just like.......... a fanfic in the form of a bulleted list), //weeping//, Also: I dare you to prove me wrong re: my conception of Quentin's Happy Place, Archived from Dreamwidth, F/F, F/M, Fandom Meta - Freeform, Gen, M/M, Other, PLEASE WON'T SOMEONE PROVE ME WRONG RE: MY CONCEPTION OF QUENTIN'S HAPPY PLACE, Things I hate:, fandom tropes, go on, lazy writing, please, please just, shipper portmanteaux, this is not a fanfic, this stupid Margo plotline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-12
Updated: 2019-04-12
Packaged: 2020-01-11 23:21:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18434222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greywash/pseuds/greywash
Summary: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯





	So I had, apparently, 7,500 words of shit to say about the Magicians 4x12

**Author's Note:**

> I've been making a bunch of meta posts for S4 on Dreamwidth, and I've been thinking about double-archiving them to AO3, since I've gotten some feedback that people would like to comment but don't have DW accounts. I also vastly prefer AO3 tagging to DW tagging and find it much easier to navigate long-term, so, especially because my 4x12 post is quite long and also not... _totally_ not a fanfic, I've decided to start working on that double-archiving project with this one. I'm going to make a series and as I drag them over and date/arrange them in their original posting order. I'm only going to post them one at a time, though, so I don't spam the relevant tags or people's email inboxes too badly. Also because I have other shit to do.
> 
> Anyway! This is sort of a rambling meta essay, sort of (in places) a fanfic in the form of a bulleted list. It was originally posted [2019.04.11, to Dreamwidth](https://greywash.dreamwidth.org/86692.html). I'm not sure whether or not I'll reply to comments to this on AO3...? I don't usually on fic but I do enjoy discussing meta. I'd rather have meta convos on Dreamwidth, though, it feels more informal and homey, but—I guess we'll see.
> 
> This contains **spoilers for _The Magicians_ up through 4x12 (obviously)**, as well as meriting **all the usual _Magicians_ -meta content warnings**, including references to **consent issues, violence, death, abuse, suicide, and mental health issues** , as well as **bury your gays and other toxic tropes**.

Honestly, I sort of—

¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

My biggest reaction was, honestly, that the episode just wasn't very good.

Like—yeah, much like [](https://starshipfox.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**starshipfox**](https://starshipfox.dreamwidth.org/) [[whose post can be found here](https://starshipfox.dreamwidth.org/15042.html)], I continue to be really frustrated with their handling of Margo and Margo/Josh in particular (I'm more willing to believe there's development in the Alice-and-Quentin stuff that remains only partially contextualized because it's ongoing and incomplete, here in 4x12, and to be built upon—like, that's not a free pass on any of the sort of—semi-sour notes the Alice/Quentin stuff strikes, or has struck, or whatever; I'm just saying that I can definitely see how they can make that work and _not_ be totally offensive or a total betrayal of Alice and Quentin both, as characters). But—Margo and Josh, man. Like, okay, so, fine, Josh represents Margo's guilt, Margo has _told_ us that Josh represents her guilt, but—I just don't think they've thought that through. I buy that he's her guilt, that he's become kind of totemic for her guilt, but I buy it _specifically because_ Josh is positioned, and saving Josh becomes, such a perfect repository for Margo's guilt _over Eliot_ , and her guilt over her role in getting Eliot possessed at the end of Season 3, and her failure to save Eliot at the start of Season 4.

I feel like—they've set this up, for Margo, but they haven't given it the development that it needs for her relationship to Josh to actually carry any real emotional weight; and I just—we _all know_ that her relationship with Eliot is **the defining relationship** of Margo's life. Her desert quest centered that relationship for a _reason_. And for her to do anything other than force-feed fish!Josh the leaf, leave her fairy eye, and say, "Sorry kid, hope it takes" just seems—like, it's not even that it's bad characterization or shitty politics, though—it's both, it's that it doesn't make any _sense_ , especially not since it's coming, in story time, probably, what, like a week after she gets back from the desert? Like, what more can she see herself doing for Josh, there, _besides_ feeding him the leaf, leaving her fairy eye, and hoping it takes? They _just established_ that she can take her eye out, _specifically so that she doesn't have to be there_. But—what can she see herself doing for _Eliot_? Because I bet Margo can see herself doing a _lot_.

So. I have a really hard time seeing the writers doing what it'd take at this point to stick that landing, on the Margo front _especially_ —

—especially, _especially_ because season finales of _The Magicians_ historically struggle, super super hard, with pacing.

I think the year they did the best with the finale was S1, where the Reynard and Beast plotlines are pulling against each other really directly and in a way that makes for really effective narrative tension. 2x13 has a little too much going on, and they struggled to make the turn from the god-killing plot into all magic dying while keeping the energy up. 3x13 is just flat-out boring; they had too much to do to make the goddess!Julia plotline and the key quest and the monster babysitting thing and manage four million characters amid all of Quentin's goodbyes to everyone he loves, and then there was all the plot yo-yoing in Blackspire, and I just sort of—mentally wandered off. The first time I watched it, and also every time thereafter. 3x13 is just not a very good episode, yo; and 4x12 isn't either.

So I keep kind of asking myself, like—okay. Maybe, _maybe_ them pushing all of this sort of... scattered, emotionally discontinuous, overcrowded plot stuff to 4x12 could ultimately be effective, because it _might_ free up room for them to tighten their shit for 4x13. Do I think that's going to happen? Hmmmmmmmmmmmm _do I_. Like, here's what we've got going on right now:

  1. Alice and Quentin are at least _sort of_ back together. Are we supposed to care about this relationship? I mean, I don't, but (AND I GET THAT THIS PUTS ME IN THE MINORITY BUT) I also do not care that much about ongoing canon!Eliot/Quentin.** Quentin/Alice is just sort of a "Okay, and?" kind of a thing for me right now—it only matters to me if they can use it to make narrative hay.  

  2. ** I _do_ care about canon!bisexual!Quentin. This is not the same thing as caring about ongoing canon!Eliot/Quentin. More on this later.  

  3. Eliot and Julia are possessed. The monsters can't be killed. The only thing they have introduced in this season that has fucking _anything_ to do with how to get Supernatural Being A out of Mortal Body B is the axes—but I observe that the only thing we know about the Foremost and the axes for sure is that the Foremost is a douchebag misogynist liar and that the axes work, _maybe_ , to expel a fundamentally benevolent being out of the body of a raging dick. Is this power applicable? I mean, I don't know, _is it_?  

  4. Alice and Quentin are powered up to an unknown level. The eye flares are part of the show's god vocabulary, typically, but god eye flares are historically green (monster = amber, beast/wellspring = blue) and these eye flares were blue—but these didn't look like the beast/wellspring blue eyes effect, they look like the god flare, only blue. So.... are we talking Beast-level power? God-level power? Other? Unclear.  

  5. Kady, Zelda, and Eliot's body have all been poison-room poisoned. Julia is invincible, so she's presumably fine, but we know that Eliot's body is still human and subject to little human frailties like drug addiction and withdrawal. So we have _three_ major characters who are either deathly ill, or possibly _about_ to be deathly ill.  

  6. Monster!Julia and Monster!Eliot have split up in the Library. Why? Unclear. But they've got some old-gods-related shit to do and it presumably requires them to not be operating together—why?  

  7. Monster!Julia is face to face with Alice and Quentin; Quentin's got one axe and they've got at least one of the magic bottles.  

  8. Penny 23 is at large, presumably somewhere in the Library, presumably with the other axe, presumably also with a magic bottle. He's also still sitting on Penny 40 telling him to "do what he says" and this detail where we know that, somehow, Penny 23 is integral to the coming Big Fucking Magic Events. So—we don't know, yet, exactly what this entails, but this is one of the few things that they've dropped that I think _has_ to get resolved this season, in part because Penny 23 is still so loosely tethered to the rest of the cast. I feel like a lot of stuff they could drag out, but this, I think, they have to deal with.  

  9. Also in the Library: Fogg, Sheila, a bunch of dead Librarian bodies, potentially two extremely adorable alive Librarian puppies. I mean, I don't know for sure, but I feel like the Monster might like a couple puppies. I'm not sure what he'd do with them, but—just saying, I will be surprised to the amount of 0 if at some point in the next episode Monster!Eliot rolls up to Monster!Julia with a puppy under each arm, going, "puppppiiiiieeeeeesssss :D :D :D". Unfortunately, this scenario probably does not end well for the puppies.  

  10. Speaking of puppies, which we only sort of were, where's Kady's puppy? Remember that? Remember how Kady got a puppy? Because she did. _Who is taking care of Kady's puppy?_  

  11. Also remember how Kady, with some help from Pete and later Alice, was trying to start a hedgewitch rebellion? Remember the whole earworm thing? Remember that?  

  12. Also there's a dead person in an elevator, about whom Penny 40 has A Feeling.  

  13. Josh and Margo are in Marina's apartment. Is Josh still a fish? How long _does_ the leaf take to work? Am I supposed to care? I'm sorry, _I still do not care about Josh_.  

  14. The Binder can still make Julia a person, or he can make her a god. Is he still hanging out in the apartment? I mean, probably. rn the apartment mostly seems like the plot device where they keep their stuff, tbh. I keep wanting it to be... so much more.  

  15. Pete is earwormed, and AWOL.  

  16. Marina is AWOL. AWOL, with a girlfriend. I have questions on many levels, only a couple of which relate to the actual plot.  

  17. Everett is... still alive? Presumably? For now? And angling to get possessed by the Monster? Because he's a dumbass? Or because he thinks he knows how to control that power? Either way, this plotline is stupid and I'm tired of it, can we just like—resolve it and roll for a new one?  

  18. Irene McAllister still hasn't even got a look-in this season, but... I bet she's gonna.  

  19. Mayakovsky still has dementia in Antarctica, presumably.  

  20. Are Fen and Tick just like... quietly off governing Fillory, not caring? Like, the _giant reservoir of magic_ under Whitespire seems like it probably has political implications, but idk, maybe not? What's going on, guys.  

  21. Also, who's babysitting Plover?



SPOILER ALERT: this is too much shit to deal with in one episode. I'm not even saying _resolve_ in one episode. I'm saying: that is an itemized list of 21 issues, ranging in seriousness from "I mean, it's probably at least _significant_ " to "this is major, world-ending levels of serious." (Okay, except for the puppies.) So—let's call it like 18 items because probably the puppies aren't important and also that makes the math easier: that still means that they have, basically, **like two and a half minutes per issue** to spend on each of those things in the season finale.

So then I kind of have this thing where I'm like—okay, what would _I_ do? [Like, note that this is is separate from what I _think_ they're going to do, because there's at least one thing that I think they're going to do that I would _not_ do (more on this in a second).] But—I'm a writer, I think I can spin a yarn, when I put my mind to it, and so—here's basically where I'm at, right now:

  * The Eliot-possessed-by-the-Monster plotline has gone about as far as it can without a major, major change in the terms of the game.  

  * Alice and Quentin, I can use. Specifically—I note that the place where they've positioned Alice and Quentin is very, very similar to Alice and Quentin circa the very, very end of _The Magician's Land_ (Book 3), where they're sort of—not _exactly_ dating, but the possibility is definitely there, the feelings are ostensibly there; and they're palling around talking about the Cozy Horse, who is an important figure in the last chapter of _The Magicians Land_. I note that the Drowned Garden also comes up quite late in Book 3, though—it works a little bit differently. That's an interesting place to position things, with a whole season left to go; [see also](https://greywash.dreamwidth.org/76453.html).  

  * Fuck Josh. The only story-legitimate reason to keep Margo out of play in the Library is to position her to be useful, in fact _critical_ in another way. [It's still shitty character motivation and if they _are_ doing that to set her up for that, they did it badly and they should feel bad, but whatever, it's what I've got to work with right now.]  

  * Penny 23. Penny 23 is kind of a major plot problem right now; he needs to either get killed, or get _nailed to the rest of the cast_ , both logistically and emotionally. I vote option B. He needs an anchor, and—specifically—needs to be anchored to whatever's going to be the master emotional arc for Season 5, because right now he's just kind of... floating, sort of... awfully fond of Julia, but that's not enough to make him feel like the part of the team.  

  * Many of these problems are also potential problems for Kady, who was previously basically pinned to the story via Penny 40.  

  * The Library are villains, but so far they're also sort of... villains-lite. If you're going to make an authoritarianism allegory, it needs to have more direct personal relevance to the characters. Right now the people who the authoritarian bits of the Library have been the worst for, and the most dangerous for, are secondary characters: _Zelda_ bears the bulk of the emotional weight of Penny 40's death (which, like—she should, but there's _a lot more super awful stuff_ that the Library has been up to), but the great thing about Monster!Eliot as a villain is it is very, very, _very_ hard not to have feelings about him, because he's both camped out in Eliot's body, and _continually brutalizing Eliot's friends_ , especially Quentin. You can make the Library into a decent villain, but they gotta be a lot worse. _Whoever_ we get as the S5 villain has got to be worse than the Library is _right now_ , and worse in a way that feels more personal.



So okay, here is what **I** would do, if I were writing the 4x13 script at this point:

  1. Monster!Eliot follows Monster!Julia around, wanting a name, bringing her puppies, _just long enough_ to realize that she's going to kill Quentin. This is a dealbreaker. Quentin is his friend. The Monster jumps bodies, into Quentin, to protect him from his sister: leaving Eliot alive but significantly the worse for wear on the floor of the Library.  

  2. Monster!Quentin basically has learned to be just dishonest enough to sell this jump to her as him needing a new body because the old one was starting to feel kind of funny, and they go to kill some Old Gods while the Monster tries to navigate protecting his buddy, whose body he is now wearing, and suddenly being afraid of his sister and not knowing if she is his friend and she loves him, really, because she was going to kill _Quentin_ , his _friend_ , and that is something he can just not be having.  

  3. Meanwhile, poison-room poisoned Eliot comes to alone with Alice in the Library. Alice then has to don her #1 Best Researcher hat, with help from Dean Fogg and Sheila (I bet her... finding-thingies-mancy, which I can't spell, will help), to come up with the cure they couldn't manage when there were all those pesky living Librarians running around everywhere, while Penny 23 takes both axes and goes back to the apartment for Margo.  

  4. ~~Josh dies. Sorry, Josh.~~ OR I MEAN, WHATEVER, Margo sends him back to Fillory to catch Fen up because he can remember sentences longer than a bunny. Fen shuts him up in the pantry. He's probably delighted, I don't care. How does Josh get to Fillory without Penny? IDK, maybe Penny drops him off, whatever, I also don't care about magical logistics.  

  5. Meanwhile Margo pops the ol' eye back in and hitches a ride with Penny to the Library to throw herself into Eliot's arms. Alice yells at her for getting in the way. Then Penny and Margo use Margo's fairy eye to look at the place where the Monsters disappeared to see ~magic things~ about where they've gone. Penny and Margo probably pop over to Fillory to hydrate (or maybe they do this when they drop Josh off? I DON'T KNOW I DON'T CARE ABOUT JOSH, I'M RIGHT BACK TO "JOSH DIES"), then go after Monster!Julia and Monster!Quentin into the realm of the Old Gods.  

  6. Alice and Sheila and Fogg find the cure, then they and Eliot use the Earth fountain (Library technology? Zelda's not a Traveler, how does she get back and forth?) to track down Kady and Zelda to get them to take it. They find, presumably, one of them, but not the other. Since I'm writing this: they find Kady, and Kady refuses the cure. Alice gets really, really mad at her, reminds them they have a whole fucking hedgewitch rebellion to run, tells her to put her big girl panties on and suck it up and drink it, so Kady drinks it, eyefucking Alice resentfully the whole time. Sheila and Fogg go after Zelda. They find her back in the Library: dying, quietly murdering Everett.  

  7. ON ANOTHER PLANE OF EXISTENCE: Monster!Julia goes on a killing spree. Monster!Quentin helps, nervously, but lovingly?? Is this how you family??? He forgets, it has been a long time since he had family and he only has the one friend and he is keeping his friend very very very safe in the house inside him but he goes to visit sometimes and like—  
  
Quentin, in Quentin's happy place, which is a blank hollow white void and doesn't—really look like anything, not even Penny 40's in-between place which at least had furniture direct-imported from a second-rate waiting room: No, okay. Buddy. This is crazy talk, I know, but: you should not have to kill anyone, people or gods, to make your family love you.  
Monster: But :( _Nobody else_ loves me. :( Except—I put Eliot back, now do _you_ love me?  
Quentin: ...I mean.  
Monster: :( :( :( :( :( :(  
Quentin: Thank you. That was. Nice of you.  
Monster: I did it to save you. And—because you. Love him, so.  
Quentin: ...........Thanks.  
Monster: Any. Time.  
Quentin: ...it's kind of weird for me, that you still look like him. In here, I mean. And also—you killed a lot of people. And also, now you've got my _other_ best friend possessed, which—was not cool. Seriously.  
Monster: But I possessed you too.  
Quentin: I noticed.  
Monster: So now you can be with her!!  
Quentin: ...really, really not the same.  
Monster: :(((((((((((  
Quentin: yeah.  
Monster: But—I need her.  
Quentin: _Do_ you, though?  
Monster: :(  
Quentin: She seems like she's mean to you.  
Monster: :( :(  
Quentin: She tried to kill your friend. She wants you to murder the rest of your family.  
Monster: well _they_ don't love me :( :( :(  
Quentin: Yeah :( I'm sorry, buddy.  
Monster: And _she'll_ only love me if I help with murder :(  
Quentin: ...are you saying... you don't want to do that, maybe?  
Monster: DDDDDDDDDDD: I just want to! Eat chips!! And see—pretty things that humans make, and maybe—pet a puppy, and drink. Good human things like _iced white chocolate mochas_ and _caramel macchiatos_ since _apparently_ , I am not allowed to have _tequila_ , >:[, and spend time with—my friends, _not_ in the house in their head that doesn't have any ART or WINDOWS or COMFY SOFAS, WHY IS THE HOUSE IN YOUR HEAD SO DEPRESSING, QUENTIN  
Quentin: I, uh—well, look, one thing at a time, so—if you don't want to go killing things and your sister insists that you kill things or she won't love you, then she's... pretty fucking shitty at being your family, okay? This is like. Toxic family relationships 101.  
Monster: D: but D: D:  
Quentin: I know. It's shitty. Families can be shitty. Families can sometimes be _really_ shitty, like how your parents called you mistakes and let people experiment on you and chop you up and imprison you.  
Monster: :( :( :(  
Quentin: *puts some mental effort into producing an iced white chocolate mocha even though ugh, that's disgusting* *gives the Monster a fuzzy blanket* *sits next to him on the cold, barren floor in Quentin's happy place, wondering if this could, possibly, be any more boring*  
Monster: I found puppies in the Library :(  
Quentin: yeah...  
Monster: she wasn't nice to the puppies :( :(  
Quentin: I mean. You don't have such a great track record for being nice to things either, buddy.  
Monster: ...........................if I get us out of here will you show me?  
Quentin: ...............Julia too?  
Monster: ..........I will do my best.  
Monster: .......Yes.  
Monster: ...Buddy.  
  

  8. OUTSIDE QUENTIN'S HAPPY PLACE, but still on another plane of existence: Margo and Penny try to corral the Monsters, while Julia is leading the way on the whole Old God murder spree. Penny can barely see, because other plane of existence and the way that plays with the visible spectrum is terrible, so he's basically hanging onto Margo's bra straps for dear life and letting her guide him around, so basically: we are in a world's-meanest-chihuahua-acting-as-guide-dog-for-a-Bernese-mountain-dog territory: the visuals alone, here, would be hilarious. Margo is like, "Okay, so they're over there, doing some murder: imma need you to let go of me so I can go after Julia, and I'll just—aim you at Quentin." *shoving Sorrow into Penny's hand, shouldering Sorrow with the other* "Now!"  

  9. So then Margo shoves Penny at Quentin, and Penny swings, but misses, because see above re: visible spectrum; while Margo gets Sorrow into Monster!Julia's sternum, and Julia just sort of... looks down.  

  10. "Well," Monster!Julia says, " _that's_ annoying."  

  11. ...while in the background Monster!Quentin grabs Penny 23's hand and the Monster slithers inside of him for a second to basically shout, H O L D H E R, directly into Penny's brain (as soon as the Monster's not inside him anymore, a _very disoriented_ Quentin halfway falls over, vomits all over his shoes, and then slips in it trying to get over to help Margo—which, lbr, that's not happening; and besides then the Monster slips back into him and sort of—tries honestly to mostly stay out of his way, which makes Quentin hurl _again_ , because jfc, it is _really fucking bizarre_ to have extra people inside of him.)  

  12. Margo loses her fucking shit, and pulls the axe out, and swings again, and again, and again, while Julia's just like, "Hm." and Margo's like, "YOU FUCKING ASSHOLES, YOU ARE SO MUCH FUCKING WORK, DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHAT I HAVE BEEN UP TO, TRYING TO GET THIS FIXED, THESE PAST FUCKING MONTHS HAVE BEEN TOTAL CRAP, YOU BAG OF DICKS, THIS PLOTLINE IS DUMB AND I'M TIRED OF IT—": and then Zelda pops in, looking very, very ill, and magic-freezes Margo and Penny and Quentin (mostly, he's still kind of flailing jerkily, with the Monster trying to figure out where to sit, inside of him), and then Zelda's like—hello. I am the new head of the Order of the Library of the Neitherlands. And I would like to propose an arrangement.  

  13. And so Monster!Julia just kind of looks at her, and is like, "You're dying. Human. Useless. What would I want with you?"; and Zelda's like, "This pocket dimension. This plane of existence. This isn't all of them. The Old Gods are—spread out, and weak, and vulnerable, but the Library still knows how to get to them. You don't." And Zelda holds up Alice's cure in one prissy little hand, and then the Binder in the other. "I take this, I live. I use this, I become indestructable, like _that_ one is. It's your choice, whether you want me to do that so that you have a body to go into that welcomes you, and put all my knowledge at your fingertips, or I do that and then put all the power that my predecessor amassed towards destroying you."  

  14. And Monster!Julia sort of gives Quentin a Look, like: _pathetic_ , even though his ears are all glowy where the Monster is sort of... half-in, half-out of him; and then Monster!Julia's like: ........hm. interesting. Tell me more: and then jumps into Zelda's body (Julia falls over, much more gracefully than Quentin); and Zelda downs Alice's cure, and then unhinges her jaw and eats the Binder.  

  15. So then we have: one (1) Margo Hanson, still _incredibly fucking frustrated_ and still armed with supernatural axes; one (1) Julia Wicker, who feels incredibly nauseated and also unsure why their one (1) Penny Adiyodi is also somewhat unsteady on his feet; and also one (1) Quentin Coldwater, still with one (1) intangible supernatural companion, who is trying to figure out how to fold himself up into Quentin's happy place without shoving Quentin inside of it, which keeps making Quentin feel pretty seasick but he's hurled three times now and he doesn't think he can throw anything else up. They are surrounded by Quentin's puke and dead old gods. None of them but Margo can see the dead Old Gods but Margo assures everyone that these two things are equally gross. Side effect: the lack of visual effects on dead old gods helps keep production costs down. J/K, this episode only exists in my mind so the dead old gods are filmed in widescreen in 11 different dimensions and all wear sparkly tights on their tentacles.  

  16. Penny takes them back to Marina's apartment. Bad news from Fillory: Zelda showed up and drank the secret sea. Bad news from the Library: Sheila and Fogg went back to the Library and started trying to do cleanup, but then basically huge intangible magic started roiling up and down the stacks, disintegrating any people (dead or alive) that it found. Bad news from Alice and Kady: hedges have started winking out of existence, right off the street, and then turning up thirty seconds later four streets over as dead lifeless husks, all the magic carved out of them. Extra bad news: that one's not Zelda. It looks like all the magicians with black cards are reconfiguring them, somehow, so instead of trying to draw on the Library (suddenly closed for business), they're drawing magic directly out of all the hedges that Everett so conveniently marked for them. Meanwhile, Eliot and Margo are clinging to each other desperately on the sofa. Quentin has had to go lie down in the dark with an icepack.  

  17. Penny and Julia go upstairs to see him. "So... you have... a tenant, basically?" Penny says.  
  
Quentin: I have a migraine.  
Julia: ...yeah.  
Quentin: He, uh—he wants to know if you can teach him how to astral project. Like, how to do stuff, without a body. Because he has a hard time controlling— *monster voice* where I put my feet. Where he—where he puts his feet.  
Penny: uh... yeah I mean... _that's_ not weird...  
Quentin: I am going to vomit for the rest of my life.  
Julia: Yeah, so let's... fix that, maybe?  
Penny: _Can_ we fix that?  
Julia: Well, I mean—it seems like I'm not quite so— *fireworks spell* blocked, anymore, so—  
Quentin: *sounding very, very ill* _Please stop making lights so loudly_



So basically _my_ version of Season 5 ends up being: Zelda, actually getting the opportunity to be the villain she was so heartlessly denied; Irene McAllister, vampiring out on NYC hedges and probably hunting Quentin, because Quentin's got that convenient plot device still mostly hanging out inside him. New York is too loud and too bright and too dangerous, anyway, so Eliot and Alice and Julia and Penny take Quentin back to Fillory and move him into a cave way out in the boonies, with about seventy bajillion protection spells on the cave and the meadow outside it and some very soft muted spell-lights and also Kady's puppy, who Kady kindly agrees to give to Quentin and the Monster because tbh she's not really home often enough for a puppy. In S5 they give him regular check-ins to make sure he's doing okay and the Monster is paying attention to his no-murder and slowly-venturing-forth-from-Quentin's body lessons, courtesy of Penny; and also to bring him Starbucks, but mostly Alice is busy with Kady and Sheila, trying to train the hedgewitch-and-Brakebills-and-Library-defectors unified magical resistance, which Margo calls Fumblemore's Army; and Julia is trying to figure out how her new powers work, and how to use them against Zelda and Irene, because they're not quite god powers and not quite monster powers and not quite magician powers, either, but she's still pretty clearly back to being the most powerful piece on the board; and Eliot and Margo are in Fillory acting as Fen's intelligence agents and generals, as soon as Fen retracted Margo's banishment.

Penny ends up making a lot of Starbucks runs, before Remedial Astral Projection for Monsters class:

Penny: are you actually okay? Like—are you _sure_ you're okay.  
Quentin: Well, I am going to die of diabetes. *slurp slurp slurp slurp slurp* Please go, that was enough astral projection for one day, my migraine's back, please, you have—shit to do, I have a Monster-in-rehab to babysit, we've all got a lot going on.  
Penny:  
Penny:  
Penny:  
Penny: So—Alice wants me to bring her, next time I come.  
Quentin: ...yeah.  
Penny: .......So does Eliot.  
Quentin: .........yeah.  
Penny: have you actually had a conversation with either of them?  
Quentin: We've been sort of busy.  
Penny: ...right.  
Penny:  
Penny: By "we" you mean "you and the Monster," don't you, you fucking freak.  
Quentin: .................and the dog?  
Penny: So can I bring them, or?  
Quentin: If I tell you no are you going to stop bringing me Starbucks?

SO IN _MY_ VERSION OF SEASON 5: Quentin is mostly not on the show. He lives in a cave in Fillory with a Monster and a dog. But he does show up every episode or two, when Penny comes to visit, they become—friends, and they talk a lot, so that Quentin can start doing some emotional-glue-work to act as an anchor for Penny 23, who's presumably still feeling pretty useless and disconnected and like a taxi service, except for how Julia and Quentin still seem to need him, at least.

Around episode 5, because that is historically when Quentin makes bad decisions with his penis, Quentin and Penny and arguably the Monster all get a little tipsy together, and then Quentin and Penny hook up. The Monster thinks this is weird and gross and astral projects right on out of there to go play with the dog, whom he has named Tequila. LBR: this hookup occurs mostly to make both Eliot and Alice D:-face forever, because it turns out that both of them were sort of lightly assuming that they (like—each of them, individually) and Quentin were In True Love Forever, and also, seriously, can Quentin not keep it in his pants for eight months together? (CONVENIENTLY IGNORING how Quentin has had a very hard year and basically never had consensual sex before like ever.) Then the Alice/Penny/Eliot(/Julia, but Julia mostly is so preoccupied with trying to figure out how to defeat Zelda and Irene that she's sort of like, oh, sorry, I've been busy, do you need to get it elsewhere? because... have at, I guess) trio/quadrangle then has a whole bunch of very catty, bitchy interludes amongst and between them; while Margo laughs/Kady yells at all of them forever.

The next time she's in Fillory Alice steals the royal carriage and goes out to Quentin's meadow and flops out next to him (near twilight, so it's not too bright out) and is like "So, I'm friends with Eliot again, mostly because now I have someone who understands how _totally infuriating_ you are"; and Quentin's like, "Yeah, I. Get that." And then Alice looks at him, and she's like, "...Good though, right?" and Quentin turns like nineteen shades of red and tries to sink through the grass and then he's like, "...it's not like I ever _didn't get it_ ," and Alice is just like, grinning up at the sky, feeling kind of loopy about it, and then the puppy—dog, now, really—comes over and starts licking her face. That's gross and also Alice is never sure when the Monster is riding in the dog, which he does sometimes, so she sits up and straightens her skirt out and is like, "Okay. Well—if I wanted to make this perfectly symmetrical I guess I'd fuck Margo and Eliot, but—I'm. Not going to do that, so—how do you feel about Kady?"

And Quentin looks up at her, and he's like, "...for revenge, or just, like. For a good time?" And Alice is like, *shruuuuuuuuuuuug* "I'm. Not sure yet. But. The latter, maybe. She wouldn't make good revenge, would she."

Fen is developing Fillory's first automated data retrieval system. It runs on knives. How? Don't care. Magic. Computer. Knives. She only cares about—like, any of this drama when it means that Eliot is late with his reports because he detours four days off course to go and ambush Quentin in his cave. The Monster, who is doing pretty okay with an hour or two without a body at this point, sees Eliot loping into the field after many, many, many long talks in Quentin's happy place (which now has green walls, and a white fleece rug, and a big windowseat, and a squashy leather sofa with a crocheted afghan and a patchwork quilt, and flowers all around it like the meadow outside) about things like family and not-murdering bad waiters and how to pet a dog nicely and being kind to people who love you and the importance of having conversations about things you're feeling instead of having murder about them, blasts his way down the meadow and knocks Eliot out.

Quentin, from the mouth of the cave: Thank you, Martin. That was very cathartic.

(But then, yes. Eventually, Eliot and Quentin do have a conversation. I don't even care where it leaves them. But I do require that they talk.)

But—that's what I'd do. Not what I think they're going to do.

So here is my actual 4x13 speculation (including, as always, speculation about character death). **[cw for discussions of death, abuse, suicide, mental health issues, bury your gays, other toxic tropes—the _Magicians_ grab bag, pretty much.]**

The #1 thing that I think they're going to do, at this point, that I both _really_ don't want them to do and don't find either in character or narratively necessary, is directly position Alice/Quentin and Eliot/Quentin in opposition to each other—as in, force Quentin to assert, to one of them, that he is involved with/dating/in love with the other, and that's why he can't bone them. The traditional route, here, would be the [Unrequited Love Switcheroo](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UnrequitedLoveSwitcheroo) (see also: "[Interface Spoiler](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17885408)," Pt. 2), where now that Eliot has sorted out, in his head, that he wants Quentin, Quentin has moved on, with Alice.

I don't want the show to do this for any number of reasons, not the least of which is that love triangles, in all their forms, are very nearly the dumbest and tiredest of romantic story clichés, but more importantly: I just—don't buy it, at this point, that Quentin's like—even remotely in a place where he's thinking about dating. This setup would be marginally (marginally) more interesting to me if they took the, like, Romantic Writing 102 approach and made Quentin actually—experience some mental and emotional division over this one: you told me _no_ , you _ditched_ me, you told me to fuck off and go be life partners with someone else for a while and I'm _trying to do it_ , Eliot! But of _course_ I'm not over you, I'm Quentin Coldwater, I have _never in the history of my life actually gotten over anyone_ —but what the hell do you expect me to tell _Alice_ , like four days after I told her I wanted to give it another shot?

This... has some narrative potential, and not just because it sets up a lot of space for Quentin and Eliot to have mad sexual tension in S5. It has some narrative potential because it recenters choice (again, the #1 watchword for S4). But—okay, guys. Right now? Quentin doesn't need a girlfriend. He doesn't need a boyfriend. **The number-one thing that Quentin needs right now is some decent mental health services**. Like I'm—fine, basically, with Quentin getting either a girlfriend, or a boyfriend, or both, or several of each, in the abstract, but—what I'm really, really worried the show is going to do is sweep under the rug that Quentin has spent all of S4 being abused by someone with the face and eyes of someone he loved; just like he spent all of S2 being abused by someone with the face and eyes of someone he loved; and that every little miserable exhausted line of Quentin's face and body is screaming: I'm depressed, I'm anxious, I'm drowning in grief, I have PTSD: _I need some fucking help_. And he's not going to get that help from Alice, _or_ from Eliot. _He can't_. Even if they weren't inevitably, inescapably going to retraumatize him, _just by being them_ , you can't get your mental health services from your partner. You can't. You can't. _You can't_. There's a certain point where I need, need, _need_ this show to actually acknowledge how much of the undercurrents of his relationships— _especially_ his relationship with Alice, since Alice _remembers abusing him_ —are going to be colored by that abuse; and how desperately Quentin is going to need some extra fucking help to get out of that.

Part of what bothers me about how they're handling this is: I think it's feeding into the shit with how I think they're flagging Quentin for our big S4 death in a way I really, really dislike. If Quentin does something dumb and self-sacrificing right now, I'm going to have a really hard time not reading it as suicide. He's desperately depressed and badly traumatized: this is not a kid who's making good decisions. **Quentin needs help**. _On top of that_ : when you layer in that it really, really looks like _whatever_ happens in 4x13 is going to include this layer of forcing Quentin to choose, and then articulate a choice, between Alice and Eliot, I'm like—Jesus H. Christ, are you seriously about to—make your mentally ill bisexual character _choose to die over his inability to choose between a boy and a girl_??? Because—that is really, really what this is starting to look like. And that is. Literally. **L I T E R A L L Y**. The worst possible way you could end this season, from the perspective of the artistic and political integrity of this show. And like—sure, yes, if Quentin dies, we all know he's coming back, but—look. The _single consequence_ that death actually has on this show is the story that it tells about the people doing the dying. Penny 40 choosing to burn his body than be an indentured servant for the Library forever says something about death, and freedom, and Penny 40. This would say something about Quentin, too—and mental illness, and trauma, and bisexuality; and it is _really fucking emphatically not_ something I actually want them to say.

Basically—there other ways this can end. There are _LOTS_ of other ways this can end. But they have made a lot of very tidy, convenient space for that ending—and that is just. Not okay. NOT OKAY. Not okay, not okay, not okay with me, Jesus fucking Christ. So—right now pretty much what I'm _hoping for_ , on this front, is that they punt over killing Quentin (even though it looks like that's going to mean sacrificing some artistic integrity) because I genuinely can't see how they follow through, on the art front, without really, really, _catastrophically_ letting us down on the politics. HELL OF A CHOICE, AIN'T IT.

Anyway.

In a broader sense: I think we're going to end S4 with the Monster out of Eliot, and/or Eliot dead. My guess is that we'll end with the Monster out of Eliot and Eliot alive, but I don't know if it's going to be the Monster leaving because they drive him out; or because he leaves of his own volition, or because the Monster is changing sides. Where he goes—I don't know, man, but I don't see why, honestly, if the Monster _wanted_ to leave Eliot's body, they couldn't (for example) make him a golem. He is pretty fucking powerful, I bet he could animate some living clay just fine. They could also could conceivably use the Binder to make him a human, and/or use the mirror realm to split Eliot, or Eliot's corporeality (or someone else's corporeality) to give the Monster a body he could safely drive—like, this is part of what I hate about fantasy. There are no rules. They can do whatever the fuck they want. For all we know the Monster could animate Margo's axes, turn them into the most powerful weapons in the land. Actually, that'd be fun. They could use them to fight the Big Bad in S5. At night Margo and Eliot could each cuddle one. For the Monster this would probably be the best he's ever come to having loving parents. I really desperately hope they don't kill Eliot; I get that he's In Peril but can't see how it could serve a useful narrative purpose and also: arc fatigue, so like—let's just get Eliot back, okay? Cool. Thanks.

Other bodies? I still kind of think they're going to kill Josh (which could incite Margo to ARGH OH MY GOD I DON'T CARE, LIKE, EVEN A LITTLE), but yeah, this could just be wishful thinking—especially since Josh has, out of all of them, the least of a relationship with Penny 40, so it's almost certainly _not_ him in the elevator. My money for the person in the elevator is (more or less in order) Quentin, Kady, Eliot, or Julia (I've swapped Julia and Eliot's positions on this list several times, so I guess they're kind of functionally tied, in my mind); but there's also no real reason it couldn't be Margo or Alice, and—the problem! With this show!! Is that no one stays dead!!! The only recommendation for killing Kady, honestly, is that she's the one person on this show who could team up with Penny 40 in the Underworld, _and not try to come back to life_. That would be nice. I am tired of the death yo-yo. It's boring, and it makes fantasy worlds like this one feel like nothing has any consequences.

I have no sense, whatsoever, as to how they actually plan to reorient all the various Big Plot pieces of this show, because there are too many and almost all of them are dumb and also, I don't care. I would like us to be done with supernatural possession, and like I said, I think they've really got about all out of that that they can without a pretty dramatic change in the terms. TBH, the plot part of this show only makes any difference to me whatsoever when it involves the Monster urgently asking his sister for a name so he can order more effectively at Starbucks. I _want_ them to either drop the weak-tea authoritarianism metaphor altogether, because they're doing it really badly, or for them to fucking commit and make S5 an all-out war between Open Magical Society (Harriet's team, the hedges, some subset of our heroes) and Closed Magical Society (the Library, Brakebills, the McAllisters). Do I think they're politically sophisticated enough to pull this off? Hmmmm, debatable. They could convince me, maybe.

If we do go full _The Avengers: Civil War_ all up in here (which I note wasn't a very good movie because it had too many characters and the plot was too complicated) then they could make all Our Heroes fight for Open Magical Society, sure, but they also could very plausibly put Alice, Kady, and Penny 23 on the side of Open Magical Society; and conceivably the Fillory contingent (Fen, Margo) and those posessed/recently dispossessed (? can you use that word that way ?) by Godlings Of Which Mortals Were Not Supposed to Know (Julia, Eliot) on the side of keeping it closed. The only reason why I think they _might_ do that is that where Quentin would fall on that divide is, I think, not actually even a little bit clear. It'd be a potential way they could make Quentin having to choose between Alice and Eliot sort of marginally more interesting, I guess, but honestly, I would really just rather we skipped the whole terrible thing.

**Author's Note:**

> [Dreamwidth](https://greywash.dreamwidth.org/86692.html) | [Tumblr](https://greywash.tumblr.com/post/184117960862/so-i-had-apparently-7500-words-of-shit-to-say).


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